Debating the Deal. Braindead Cross Burner: KK Who? Obama’s Pharaoh Moment. Steve Hilton: How to Save California. Gavin Newsom’s ‘Trump Prosecution Envy.’ The Joy of Dads.
What better setting than Versailles—”one place where all that glitters is gold indeed“—for a historic moment? President Trump thought Versailles the ideal backdrop for affixing his signature to the Iran deal:
Trump—who in an unexpected move signed the deal Wednesday in Versailles—said he was influenced by the stock market’s rise as he worked toward a resolution of the conflict. He said he didn’t want to be compared with former President Herbert Hoover, who was president during the 1929 market crash that led to the Great Depression.
“He was always the one I didn’t want to be,” Trump told reporters at the Hôtel Royal where he and other world leaders gathered for the Group of Seven meeting. “I didn’t want to see an economic catastrophe.”
Pain at the pump appears to be easing. The price of crude oil is the lowest it has been since March, and market futures early today are positive. Definitely not looking Hooverian.
Criticism of President Trump’s Iran deal is not easing. “Is Iran Really a ‘Normal Country’?” asks the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial:
Vice President Vance is using that term, “normal country,” on network after network as he tries to sell the agreement. But the regime in Iran has never shown over 47 years that it wants to build a normal country or “join the international community.” At every turn it has banked U.S. relief and concessions and used them to promote terrorism and spread its Shiite revolution.
“What the President is trying to do is actually extend the hand of peace,” Mr. Vance said on Fox. … Mr. Vance and the President seem to believe that the lure of gleaming hotels and $300 billion in investment is enough for the regime to abandon its revolutionary cause. It could have had those hotels and prosperity for decades but always chose revolution and terror. If Iran really is committed to a new direction, it shouldn’t take 60 days to find out. If the regime won’t abandon its nuclear program, it prefers revolution.
Another Wall Street editorial (“Around the Strait of Hormuz in 60 Days“) observes that Iran has not even committed to not charging tolls. The real winner in the Iran agreement is Pakistan, according to columnist Sadanand Dhume. The Editors of National Review conclude an excellent analysis of the deal this way:
Trump has said in the past that Iran has never won a war, yet never lost a negotiation. As the president and his administration now make the case for a memorandum of understanding that doesn’t meet any U.S. strategic objective, it’s impossible to say he was wrong.
Former UN Ambassador Niki Haley, who calls the MOU “a mistake,” is among the conservative critics (as is Mark Levine). Even Senator Lindsey Graham is adding caveats. Douglas Murray writes “How Trump Fell into the Iranian Trap” in The Free Press. Niall Ferguson of The Free Press, however, has a dissident take: “It’s Too Soon to Call This a U.S. Surrender.” Ferguson’s argument:
An agreement offering Iran sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, and billions in promised investment has prompted outrage. But the outcomes of wars depend on more than pieces of paper.
The sage Victor Davis Hanson is also willing to give the peace deal a chance. Miranda Devine says, “Trump is showing the world, G7 leaders who’s the ‘boss’ and deserves respect for his deal-making.”
President Trump was able to partake of Louis XIV’s splendor last night. But former President Obama’s aesthetic seems to be more ancient Egypt than ancient regime. “The Obama Presidential Center: A Pharaonic Temple in Chicago” is how architectural writer Michael J. Lewis describes the new Obama Presidential Center. Lewis writes:
Yet there is a lingering uneasiness engendered by that upright slab. It is, after all, the most ancient of monumental forms—whether stele, totem, obelisk or pylon—the universal form for commemorating a man or god. For some types of rulers it is fitting and proper, even part of the job description—say, for an Egyptian pharaoh, Roman emperor, or one of the world’s many “presidents for life.” But is it something that an American citizen-president, even one out of office, should build to himself?
… This is a vanity project, and although it slipped in under the radar in the guise of that most innocuous of architectural objects, the “Presidential (yawn) Library,” it turned into something that would be recognized by Cheops, Trajan and even Ozymandias himself.
A-listers expected for the grand opening.
Socialist Janeese Lewis George continues to hold a double-digit lead in the race to be DC’s next Mayor. If she wins, it could put the District on a collision course with President Trump, who warned that he could federalize the District. Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America, to which Ms. Lewis George belongs, have just adopted a radical new agenda, according to Stu Smith in City Journal:
The group wants to abolish the Senate, destroy constitutional checks and balances, and eliminate the “carceral forces of the capitalist state.”
How Dumb Do You Have to Be? An Asian American college kid burned a cross in Chicago’s Grant Park to protest President Trump. But he had no idea that burning crosses was associated with the KKK and claimed to have scant knowledge of the Klan.
Even dumber, the authorities are outraged about racism even though the kid was too brain-dead to know that cross-burning is racist. The cherry on top:
“I put a red hat to signify the MAGA hat, the Make America Great Again hat,” he said. “So that was, yeah, that’s what I tied on top.”
Can This State Be Saved? The Republican candidate for Governor of California writes an op-ed headlined “California Needs a Pro-Business Governor.” Steve Hilton writes:
“Why does a state with so much money, talent and promise make life for ordinary people so hard?” Mr. Zakaria asked. The answer is that for the past 16 years, California has effectively operated as a one-party state. …
The results have been dismal. California today suffers the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment rate and the highest cost of living in America. California families and businesses pay the highest gasoline and electricity prices in the continental U.S., nearly double the national average. Last year U.S. News & World Report ranked California 50th out of 50 states for opportunity. …
California still has everything you would want to start and grow a business: networks of talent, capital and universities; land, ports and a diverse supply chain; and above all a culture that celebrates risk-taking and innovation more than anywhere in the world.
All we need is a governor who acts decisively to reduce the taxes and bloat that are crushing the spirit of enterprise and a business community that actually supports business.
Governor Gavin Newsom, the man Hilton hopes to succeed, is suffering from what Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York calls “Trump Prosecution Envy”:
Gavin Newsom is outraged. “In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees,” the California governor said in a recently released video accusing President Donald Trump of directing the Justice Department to investigate him. “They’re demanding records. They’re abusing the grand jury process, digging through years and years of random documents.”
“Donald Trump isn’t just coming after me because of my mean tweets,” Newsom continued. “He’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president, because he hates that I’ve consistently called him out over and over again for his lies and deceit.”
All of this raises the question: Is Trump weaponizing the Justice Department to pursue a popular Democratic politician and possible 2028 presidential candidate? Or are there legitimate reasons that people around Newsom might attract the attention of prosecutors?
Bet on the latter.
Independent Women is closed tomorrow for Juneteenth, so this is my last opportunity to say happy Father’s Day. Instead of socks or a tie, I want to give Brad Wilcox’s Free Press piece on “America’s Great Dad Divide.” Children need fathers, but it’s not a one-way street:
This growing tendency to sidestep family life is celebrated by many on the left—and some on the right (think Andrew Tate)—as a form of freedom. But for many men, that freedom is a lie. Whatever journalists or influencers say, men without children are disproportionately lonelier, less purposeful, and less happy than their peers who have found their way to the altar and the delivery room.
